The Works. August in Mazamet

The bathroom in the master bedroom is finally nearing completion! I wasn’t sure about a new bathroom in a century old house, but I’ve been converted. Everything Mike chose is so close to the original, the room doesn’t stand out at all. The floors look particularly good.

The green salon with the Zuber wallpaper has been a struggle. The colours are incredibly difficult to work with. The background is a very light green, the peonies are vermilion, the tulips are navy blue and the lilies are aubergine. Colours I wouldn’t normally have chosen myself or put together, but it’ss handmade paper and it would be criminal to just get rid of it. I did finally manage to find a linen that matches the mustardish narrow band in the border, and the curtains are made from that. I’ve hung one set and will do the other window in the next few days. The chandelier is unusually large, just under a metre. It’s early 20th century Italian, giltwood and tole.

I got a pair of late 19th century Chinese portraits for the green salon (going on each side of the east window) that still need to be framed. Here’s one of them:

I’ve also begun restoring the wallpaper. The first step is the cleaning (removing the varnish). It’s very tedious. It involves a cotton swab and white spirits, the same process as in cleaning a painting. Goodness knows how long it’ll take me to finish, probably over a year, it does make a difference, though. The cleaned section is the bottom to middle right:

Most of the day the weather was beautiful. The sky was incredibly blue.

30 comments on “The Works. August in Mazamet”

Yes, it’s impressive, considering how much moreso it must show in person. I have a couple painting to clean, one of these days. Any advise/details on what to use, how to do it, and what I might practice on, to get started?

It’s very tricky. If you really want to attempt it yourself the thing is to go very slowly, use a light hand and be patient. Over-cleaning can mean erasing parts of the original painting. Always check the cotton swab to make sure there’s no colour on it other than the yellow/brown of the varnish. I’d practise on a cheap flea-market/ebay painting. If it’s valuable, however, I’d hand it to a professional.
The only reason I’m doing the wallpaper myself is because a proper restorer would cost a fortune for a whole room.

My best friend, in college, spontaneously decided to try her hand at art, 30 years ago, and I have two of her three paintings. One is of me. I hope to clean, restore, and then properly frame and protect them, one of these days. I’d have done it much sooner, had life gone fairly, but it has had to wait.

Have you seen the blocks they used to make this sort of wallpaper? They’re amazing. Colours were applied to blocks by hand and then the wallpaper was ‘stamped’ with the block. Extraordinary work. I feel morally obliged to restore it!

Amazing artisanship, and good for you for preserving the work. I once very nearly bought William Morris’ house and there was still some of his original wallpaper in the larder and in a cupboard off the hallway. The place was in need of a lot of repair, and not one for the faint-hearted. I pulled out of the deal.

I love the Chinese portrait in the picture. Do you apply any special glass or plastic over the front of them to protect them from the sun coming through salon windows? I’ve some old prints that sun faded, teaching me a lesson.

Thanks! We kind of work with real-estate but in a small and personal way. Mike got into it when he decided he didn’t want to act anymore and I joined him once we were together. You can see our last house here: http://sotogrande.us/villa_lafricaine_sotogrande/fran%C3%A7ais
But this house now is the ‘last’ one. We’re having the renovations done for ourselves- and I’m NEVER moving again!

Thanks! Mike takes care of the design on the structural/architectural side. I do the interiors. This current house is the most interesting we’ve ever done because the aim isn’t re-sale 🙂 NOTHING has to be neutral!

So are you an interior designer by degree? I LOVE old homes but am not the least bit artistic or handy and neither is my husband so we live in a dreadful, boring 1987 split level. Are you going to restore it to look like it did originally? I absolutely love the decor!!

My profession is art history. I’m mostly a dealer, but yes, when I moved to Spain I also took a design course.
I do hope to get the house back at least to the spirit of what it was originally- with some adaptations for modern convenience. We did, for example, install a modern kitchen.

Oh that bathroom is so elegant. It looks fantastic considering it’s a ‘functional’ part of the house. I don’t envy you the job of restoring the wallpaper though. But I suppose you could pretend it’s a hobby. -ducks and runs-

I do like the bathroom….perhaps because we installed a black and white bathroom on the top floor of the last house in France, taking down the ceiling to show the beams of the tower above. The blind vandals who now have the house have removed it all…’Black and white? Looks like a public lavatory.’
Replaced with something in magnolia no doubt.

No beautiful wallpaper…but when we took down the dry lining which had been installed on the ground floor we found 19th century frescoes showing rustic Italian scenes in one room and dramatic scenes of coastal shipwreck in another. Not in a very good state, but the DRAC sent an expert down to restore and preserve them.
Needless to say the vandals have – reinstalled dry lining….

And you are certainly morally obliged to restore the wallpaper!
In your own time, of course…

I’ll repeat Helen. I like the bathroom because it looks exactly like the one I put in our last UK house (30s).

The one we replaced was some vile 70s (?) or maybe 80s, can’t remember in burgundy. You won’t remember the trend for the Most Horrible Coloured Bathrooms Ever, but this was a strong contender.

I was very pleased with mine in the end, black tiles around the bottom, and black trim at the top, probably about the height of your first black pencil thin tiles as our room was lower. Chrome Lefroy Brooks taps. Hated leaving them behind. My nicest bathroom ever. Not sure I’d have changed your original one though.

Co.ours are difficult to match. I think the worst think is the obvious match, so grey or green/grey curtains would have been dire. Total overkill.

I’m curious about the wallpaper restoration. Is the varnish to protect the paper? What sort of varnish is it? White spirit doesn’t usually remove oil-based varnish, does it? You’ve probably said, but how long (roughly) has the paper been up? I do like the paper btw.

My parents had some lovely gold print paper but the damp in the room cause it to go green, no way of repairing that. Even worse, later they painted over the gold leaf on the cornice and the freehold gold painting on the door (they obviously didn’t go green). I may have said this before!

Your Burgundy 1970/1980’s bathroom was as ghastly as our Primrose Yellow (first house, 1979) followed by even more hideous Avocado Green in our next house (1984), the latter had tiles of a similar hue.

Lol! I remember the avocado green phase. My parents chucked out a perfectly serviceable original 1930s bathroom to replace it with a lower ceiling, (ok it was warmer), and sun king suite, which meant deep sort of gold, plus gold plated taps. I’ve hated coloured bathrooms ever since.

And! They got rid of the little window that I could jump not the balcony on. How annoying was that? But they changed my bedroom window too so I couldn’t jump onto the roof below. The things parents do 😦

Oh please… you two are just complainers. When I was little we had brown and the walls were a brown, orange and tan geometric wallpaper. Brown porcelain has one advantage which is one never knows if it’s dirty. The lights were three chrome balls, each one slightly higher than the other…